Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
Archive Forums
Hosted Forums
Personal & Hosted Forums
Hosted Publisher Forums
Eternity Publishing Hosted Forum
paradox42's crazy cosmology
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 5210884" data-attributes="member: 29746"><p><strong>Locations With Soul</strong></p><p></p><p>So, on to Planar Edifices. As the title of this post implies, these were really meant to be a sort of crossover between artifacts (specifically Soul Objects) and planar locations; of the artifacts I discussed in the previous post, the Pit, the Ring, and the Device in the Desolation could arguably go into <em>this</em> post just as easily as that one.</p><p> </p><p>But, for most purposes, a Planar Edifice is an at-least-building-sized construct existing on some plane, or demiplane, which has a specific purpose and (usually) grants powers to those who reach it and act towards that purpose. It's worth noting that most Planar Edifices used in my game were never explicitly linked to specific beings; all of the ones I'll detail in this post were created by (and thus Soul Objects of) Sidereal beings at the very lowest. It's possible the Demiurge itself created the Path of the Ultimate Gate and the Shrine of the Ninefold Path, but then again it's just as possible that those were created by the new Seventh First One and simply existed retroactively to their actual creation (that is, they existed backwards in time as well as forwards).</p><p> </p><p>As with the previous post, there are eight "items" I plan to discuss here. Those eight are: the Obsidian Tower, the Dark Lens, the Rift of Life, the Cloud of Secrets, the Desolation of the Destroyer, the Rings of the Spire, the Path of the Ultimate Gate, and the Shrine of the Ninefold Path.</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Obsidian Tower</span></strong></p><p> </p><p>Of the Planar Edifices I've mentioned in threads prior to this one, this edifice is the one I've mentioned most often. In part, this is because it was one of the most-visited by my PCs; also, it was the very first that any of my parties went to.</p><p> </p><p>This one started its life with the Planescape Inner Planes supplement, a soft-cover book released later in the line which contained (in typical Planescape fashion) first-person accounts of what to expect in the Elemental, Energy, and Para- and Quasi-Elemental Planes. The book is chock-full of ideas, and if any DM out there has the chance to pick up a copy, I recommend it without hesitation unless you're running 4E. The radical changes wrought upon the base cosmology with 4E render it largely obsolete, though you can probably still get good ideas that could be "transplanted."</p><p> </p><p>But it's one idea that was transplanted with which we're concerning ourselves here. Specifically, the book mentions a quiet place deep in the Plane of Minerals where even natives rarely go, that is said to contain a forge of mythic power. The <strong>reason</strong> even the natives stay away, however, is that it is apparently not completely abandoned, because sometimes travelers who go there... disappear. Nobody knows who or what built it, let alone why, nor what guards it. I'm leaving out a few details from the original, here, but that's the general gist- an honestly the original description isn't much more than what I typed above.</p><p> </p><p>For some reason, though, this idea grabbed hold of my brain and wouldn't let go. I knew I had to have it in my game, when it came time to transform the old setting into the 3rd Edition version, and so I set about giving it more details. First, when I sat down to do this, I had recently moved and so was going off old memories of the description rather than actually digging my book out of whatever box it was in (not that I even knew for sure which one that was). So I got the name wrong- the original version was called the Tower of Lead, but I just remembered that it was a "dark" tower made of heavy materials with ominous overtones. So, I thought of obsidian- black volcanic glass- which also, incidentally, is the material that they supposed Isengard to be made of for the <em>Lord of the Rings</em> movies- and used that. My tower became the Obsidian Tower. To be slightly more specific, the description I used in my game is that in a remote and mostly-forgotten corner of the Plane of Minerals, the rocks get heavy and dark- the crystals so common throughout the rest of the plane give way to ores, veins of dark and heavy metals such as lead, and minerals such as coal or onyx which absorb more light than they reflect. In an immense cavern (half a mile long by about 1,000 feet wide) formed within this "dark zone," there stands a large and lonely tower about 100 feet tall made of blackest obsidian, rising out of a squat, squarish building (of the same material) obeying no architectural standards known to the modern era.</p><p> </p><p>Where I further differed from the original was in giving it the fleshed-out, game-mechanics-compatible details that could make the place work in an actual game, and make it an interesting (if scary) place to visit. First, I knew that I wanted the forge inside the tower to be a place where one could craft full artifacts if one were so inclined, and second, I knew that this had to be a place made by the Overgods (which meant that some of their powers would be left in it). So I studied the item crafting rules carefully and came up with two essential components to the place, to make it an item-crafting location of tremendous power.</p><p> </p><p>The first of these was that the anvil and tools there were of such magnificence, and in fact contained such incredible magical potency, that they would reduce the crafting time of any item created there: I wanted an absurdly powerful speedup, so I chose to borrow from <em>Star Trek II</em> and make "hours seem like days." That is, any item crafted at the anvil would take only one hour of crafting per 1,000 gp value, rather than the normal 1 day of time. Furthermore, I stated that the crafter who was using the anvil would not need to rest, eat, or drink while using it, so you could work 24/7 and never get tired or otherwise need to stop. This would obviously translate to a huge speedup over normal item crafting! Finally, as if that weren't enough, the tools would grant any user a +30 bonus to any Craft skill check- of any subtype- when in use.</p><p> </p><p>The second feature of the Obsidian Tower was its Forge, which contained an arguably <strong>more</strong> useful power than the anvil and tools did: the Forge could consume existing items fed into its maw, and transform them into "raw crafting stuff" which could then be taken to the anvil and shaped to form literally any desired object. In game terms, this meant that you could take an old item you weren't using any more, feed it into the Forge, and get its full crafting value- <em>in both gp and XP-</em> out of it, to create a new item. So, this meant that by using the Forge, an item-crafting character could in theory spend old items the party didn't want to use to create new items they did want, without going through the rigmarole of selling the items in a market and using the money to buy raw materials for the new items. More importantly, said crafter could do this <em>without even using his own XP</em> if he had enough unwanted items to toss in and burn.</p><p> </p><p>The note from the original book about "something" being left behind that didn't like visitors to the Tower of Lead led me to posit that the Overgods had left an actual Guardian in place, near the Obsidian Tower, which would be capable of merging with the surrounding cavern so perfectly as to be unnoticeable even to natives of the Plane of Minerals. This thing had to be ridiculously strong, so powerful that even beings just short of gods would fear it. I was doing this long before the Epic Level Handbook was even announced, let alone the Immortals Handbook, so I sincerely hoped I wouldn't have to stat the Guardian up for a very, very long time! My thought on the Guardian (and in fact, the Tower itself) was that it had been abandoned by its original makers, but that gods could use it with (relative or actual) impunity. Mortals, however, would have to be nearly gods themselves to be able to take on the Guardian and win, so mortals who used it would only be able to stay for about a month before the Guardian took notice of them and acted against them. And of course, if they were stupid enough to try <em>stealing</em> the tools, anvil, or (gods help them) the Forge itself, the Guardian would be all <em>over</em> them as they left.</p><p> </p><p>When the IH came along, of course, several years later, there was a very interesting bit of correspondence between my old Obsidian Tower and the list of Divine Abilities: in effect, it now seemed as though the anvil granted its user Divine Architect in addition to its mighty Craft bonus, and ability to sustain the user. My old concern about gods was now answered: gods <strong>could</strong> use the Tower, but would rarely bother doing so, because it didn't really offer them much benefit besides the cost savings of the Forge.</p><p> </p><p>I also statted up the Guardian, using some helpful nasty monsters posted on UK's site as a base, but I won't go into that here. Suffice it to say, the thing is nasty (CR in the high 40s) and not to be tangled with by any but the absolute strongest mortals. Also, the Guardian and the Tower are one, in a metaphysical sense, so if the Guardian is destroyed, the Forge and anvil and tools suddenly stop working- and continue not working until the Guardian regenerates (which takes about a month). This makes working at the Tower enough of a pain for even gods to do so sparingly, even though the Guardian is really no threat to even a single Demigod under normal circumstances (at least, my 100-HD Demigods).</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Dark Lens</span></strong></p><p> </p><p>Obviously, I didn't stop with the Obsidian Tower. Since, in part, my retooled cosmos was about balancing out things that seemed unbalanced in the original version, I decided that giving the Plane of Minerals a strange edifice left behind by the Overgods wasn't enough. The other Positive Quasi-Elemental Planes should have some too, I reasoned. But what would these other three do? I needed something (more specifically, three somethings) that could somehow match the known functions of the Obsidian Tower in a rough power-quotient sense, while still being very different functions that would be obviously tied to the planes they were on. I decided that if Minerals represented valuable materials and objects, in this sense, and therefore allowed better crafting of items and art, then Steam (because of the clouds) would probably be tied to Knowledge and would have a sort of super-library in it somewhere. This is what eventually became the Cloud of Secrets. Lightning and Radiance gave me fits, but I recognized shortly after coming up with the idea for the Cloud that there was another area where characters could make their own "stuff" that matched items in utility and mechanics: spell research (and psionic power research). My dilemma was, which Quasi-plane would get the "spell research" helper, and why? Furthermore, what would the fourth Quasi-plane get?</p><p> </p><p>Eventually, I solved the dilemma, and put the Rift of Life in Lightning and the spell-research location into Radiance. This left me with a different dilemma: in a plane dominated by light, above everything else, what the hells could an edifice like the Obsidian Tower possibly be based upon?</p><p></p><p>Well, as the name of this edifice implies, I eventually decided that since a key attribute of research was <em>focus</em> on one's goal, that a plane of endless Light could possibly host an enormous Lens to help produce that. In actuality, the Dark Lens is just the external manifestation of the real find, which is a library of unparalleled comprehensiveness and depth hosted within the bigger-inside-than-outside interior. It appears to be an enormous, perfectly circular lens of crystal dark enough to appear black from the outside, roughly 300 feet in diameter and 70 feet thick in the center. There are no openings visible to the interior, even to characters using <em>True Seeing</em> or other Illusion-defeating effects, but a successful DC 25 Spellcraft or Psicraft check will allow a character to discover the way in anyway and use it. This Lens is located in a region of the plane that appears unusually dim, with the only colors visible being dark red and violet. To many who find the place, it feels eerily like the Lens is somehow absorbing the power of the plane and is thus itself causing this strange dimming.</p><p></p><p>Like the Obsidian Tower, the Dark Lens has a Guardian, but this Guardian does not remain hidden- it instead orbits the Dark Lens (staying about 200 feet away from its equator) and is just visible as a sort of translucent shadow of itself while not active and attacking. When I described it to my players, I said "It's a vaguely humanoid, red shape about 60 feet tall, and looks like some vision of an Ancient war robot inflated to massive proportions."</p><p></p><p>On the inside, the library is immense, though of no fixed size- in truth its size is best described as "whatever size it needs to be." The crystal of the Lens is translucent, when seen from within, and lets in enough light from the plane outside to make reading easy and comfortable. Any Knowledge checks made specifically (and solely) for the purpose of advancing spell or psionic power research, as well as all Spellcraft or Psicraft skill checks, get a +30 bonus when made inside the library, and all research is conducted on the basis of 1 hour inside the Dark Lens = 1 day outside it. This exactly mirrors the item-crafting of the Obsidian Tower of course, but more importantly my group decided that the existence of the Dark Lens thus implied the existence of a "Divine Researcher" Divine Ability to mirror Divine Architect. And so we made one: its <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/197014-custom-divine-abilities-portfolios-etc-10.html#post4505387" target="_blank">writeup</a> can be found in the Custom Divine Powers thread.</p><p></p><p>In addition to providing the bonus to Spellcraft/Psicraft and specific Knowledge checks, the Dark Lens also contains a unique item specifically made to help spell or psionic power research: the Blank Book. This is an immense book (about 6 feet by 4 feet when closed, though it will always be found open when a character arrives at the Lens unless other visitors are also present) set on a squat pedestal in the largest open space in the library, directly underneath the highest part of the domed crystal ceiling. The pages are not made of any recognizable form of paper, and yet it is clearly meant to be just that. Any ink which is dripped or written onto any page of the Blank Book swiftly vanishes into the mysterious "paper" to leave it blank again, as is any marking made by charcoal, pencil, or other non-liquid writing tool; pages which are cut from the Book lose this property and may be written upon normally, but as soon as one leaves the Book and comes back, or even just turns away and then looks at it again, the damage is mysteriously repaired. The Blank Book's real purpose is to transfer knowledge: to use it, one need only hold up a magical scroll or psionic powerstone, or a magical book/Tome such as a Tome of Clear Thought, and touch it to a page. The item will flash brightly and burn away as though used, but the effect of the spell(s) or power(s) it contained do not occur: instead, whatever GP and XP was spent to create the scroll or stone, is drawn out of its remains and gifted to the character who just "burnt" it. This GP and XP can not be used for level-up purposes, and it disappears as soon as the character leaves the Dark Lens by any means; its only use is to be spent on spell or power research.</p><p></p><p>As a final note here, I'll state that my players spent considerable time in their high Epic levels (pre-divinity) searching out <em>Wish</em> scrolls and stat-booster Tomes, specifically so they could burn them in the Blank Book or the Forge of the Obsidian Tower to create new spells/powers/items.</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Rift of Life</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> So, with the two obvious Fonts of Creation (the collective name given to the four Quasi-plane Planar Edifices, the Obsidian Tower, Dark Lens, Rift of Life, and Cloud of Secrets) detailed, it now remains to describe the other two. This one was the most obscure during my campaign, and only used twice in the entire run- neither time occurring "on screen." In some ways, though, this is the most powerful of the four, and certainly would be a highly-sought-after goal for many gods looking to build worlds.</p><p></p><p>This was the hardest one to figure out, in no small part because creating life is not something the D&D game rules were really set up to handle. I placed this one in the Plane of Lightning because of the Frankenstein reference, and continuing that logic led me to posit that its main use (in the modern era at least) was to allow casters/manifesters to create Constructs more quickly and easily than normal. As a less-obvious corollary of this, the Rift can be used to bring sentience to items more quickly than is otherwise possible, though since the Obsidian Tower could also be used in that manner (given that imbuing intelligence in items is a function of item creation) and the Rift of Life has no equivalent to the Forge, it rarely is.</p><p></p><p>The Rift of Life is a cavernous space (about half a mile across) in the Plane of Lightning where no cloud goes, surrounded on all sides by clouds so dark as to be nearly black. Though lightning flashes within these clouds constantly, putting occasional flashes of light into the otherwise-dark Rift, no arc of lightning ever penetrates the space itself, not even to strike the clouds on the other side. Floating in the center of this space is a strange cage made of strands of some sort of exotic metal, which refuses to retain a single consistent color or reflective index, woven and braided about each other so as to form cords, rods and bars which are much thicker than the strands themselves. The cage is roughly spherical in shape, and wires of the odd metal extend off from it on all sides to apparently connect it to the cloud layer surrounding the Rift; the cage is usually about 30 feet in diameter when first encountered, but can extend (via a weird shifting/sliding of the strands about each other, and cunningly-hidden hinges which reveal the rods and struts to be composed of thinner ones like a huge Hoberman sphere) to be more than 300 feet across when necessary. While in use, lightning from the clouds strikes the wires connecting them to the cage, causing the cage to crackle and dance with powerful electricity and other energies generated by the interaction of lightning and metal- creatures outside the cage are never struck, but anything within the cage is (to put it bluntly) lit up like a Christmas tree.</p><p></p><p>The Rift of Life enhances creation time for Construct creatures, or the imbuing of intelligence in items, by the same 24:1 ratio as the Dark Lens and the Obsidian Tower; that is, each hour spent at the Rift essentially equals a day of work elsewhere. Additionally, any Construct brought to life at the Rift will be truly alive in the "fifth force" sense, and imbued with a proper soul, which is inclined to be grateful to its creator and therefore never has any chance of going berserk or out of control (as some golems are known to do). Also, a character who comes to the Rift with an Epic "Origin of Species" spell or equivalent means of creating non-Construct life, finds that the casting time is reduced by the same 24:1 ratio (minimum casting time 1 round), and the created creature is always capable of reproduction (even if the effect producing it normally does not allow for such). In other words, the Rift of Life effectively grants Great Breath to anybody creating life there. Every single creature created at the Rift has an INT score of at least 3, even if the effect producing the creature would normally create one with less INT or no INT score at all.</p><p></p><p>Finally, the Rift of Life has the ability to bring any dead non-Sidereal creature back to life, provided there is a body to place in the cage. No material components are required to cast <em>Raise Dead</em> or <em>Resurrection</em>-type spells there, nor must any XP be spent to cast them. Using the Rift this way always drains a level/HD from the target creature being raised, however, even if the spell used normally doesn't do that (such as <em>True Resurrection</em>). It is even possible to bring a creature back in the Rift without using a spell, though doing so is dangerous: the target must make a Will save against a DC of its own number of HD +1 per day it has been dead (or undead), or else it comes back entirely insane (as if affected by an <em>Insanity</em> spell with Instantaneous duration, irreversible except by use of the Alter Reality Cosmic Ability). To accomplish this risky spell-less resurrection, the body must be placed within the cage and left there with the cage active, for 1 hour per HD/level.</p><p></p><p>The Rift of Life has a Guardian, much like the Obsidian Tower and the Dark Lens, but it was never given stats or a description. Suffice it to say, the Guardian slumbers in the dark clouds surrounding the Rift until activated by an unauthorized user staying too long (the limit is usually about a month, but all time spent at the Rift counts- even over multiple visits).</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Cloud of Secrets</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> The fourth and last Font of Creation was the one used by far the most often in my campaign, both because it was simple for any character to use and because they became "authorized users" (which meant that the Guardians of the Fonts considered them harmless and wouldn't activate or attack based on their presence) fairly early into godhood. This one doesn't actually let one create anything directly, but the information one <strong>gets</strong> at this Font can be very handy for creating things later (if you ask the right questions).</p><p></p><p>In effect, being inside the Plane of Steam, I figured that the only proper form for a Font (being that they're all "dark" materials for their respective planes) to take here would be a Cloud. And what do clouds (particularly dark ones) surround? Secret things. So, Cloud of Secrets. I also took a cue from the description given to the personality of Steam (Quasi-)Elementals, in Planescape, which included the quirk that they all tend to hoard information carefully and make consummate spies. This led me to associate information with the Plane of Steam, and I decided that perhaps the Steam Elementals were so obsessed with secrets because something in their home plane made them that way. The idea then became, what if there is, hidden in some cloud of steam in some remote corner of the Plane of Steam, a library or archive of the most profound, powerful, and potentially explosive/damaging secrets in the multiverse? This became the initial idea for the place, and as I said above, it was the second one I came up with after the Obsidian Tower.</p><p></p><p>But it didn't stay that way. In the end, after going back and forth on several ways to handle this place, I decided that what it really does is enhance Knowledge checks. Two of the other Fonts- the Lens and the Tower- enhance associated skills, and if there were any skills in D&D associated with creating life, I would have had the Rift enhance those exactly the same way. But for this place, I decided that it would be simple in mechanics and use: when you go to the Cloud, you ask it questions, and it gives you answers. There are no books, no devices (at least, no obvious ones), and nothing to read or see unless it shows you such (which it can do via illusions or <em>Sendings</em> of direct data, like a file downloaded into the questioner's mind- whatever happens to be most convenient). Just ask a question, and roll a Knowledge check in whatever subcategory seems best. The check gets a +30 (unnamed) bonus, and the answer (if you beat whatever the DC might be) is given instantly. One thing I annoyed my players with many times was what the Cloud says when you <strong>don't</strong> beat the DC- in that case, its most common non-answer is "You are not ready for transcendence." That drove them nuts. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>Physically, the Cloud of Secrets is just a particularly dark cloud of steam deep within its plane, in a remote corner that Steam Elementals do their best to persuade travelers away from (though they won't actually fight to stop anybody from going there- instead they'll just sigh, shrug, nod knowingly, or otherwise imply that the traveler's chosen direction is not a good one). Once there, one gets an <em>impression</em> of structure hidden within the roiling clouds of mist, just out of sight, always caught out of the corner of one's eye but never there when looked at directly- and never anything tangible or physical. The impressions of structure are always for something insanely complex, with patterns of lines extending off in hidden directions like some enormous extradimensional computer motherboard. Answers, when they come, are usually given telepathically to the questioner, though sometimes (for reasons known only to itself and the DM) the Cloud actually creates audible sounds so other creatures <strong>with</strong> the questioner can also hear the answers.</p><p></p><p>Where this Font really differs from the other three- and the reason the Steam Elementals don't ever bother with combat to keep outsiders away- is that the Guardian of the Cloud never sleeps. It is always active, and always patrolling the region around the Cloud, and it recognizes intruders within a minute of their arrival every time. It moves slowly, but inexorably, and those who tarry too long in the Cloud after getting an answer or two usually don't come out again to bring the secrets they gleaned into the wider cosmos.</p><p></p><p>The Cloud of Secrets was also one Planar Edifice that I gave my players an explicit connection/origin for; it is in fact a Soul Object of Thought. As a result, its knowledge (and ability to answer questions) is nearly limitless, but everything it says has a tendency to advance Thought's agenda (insane though that may be) and/or make Far Realm intrusions into the multiverse more likely.</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Desolation of the Destroyer</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> This place is arguably the oldest Planar Edifice in terms of my own thinking about the multiverse, because way back when I was coming up with the story about the Sword(s) of Time, the Destroyer, and the Tertiars and their early doings in the multiverse, I knew that somewhere in the Negative "Material" Plane was a secret place where the energy concentrated like nowhere else, where actual <em>structures</em> like some sort of nightmarish <em>city</em> existed. Now, modern D&D has the City of Moil, true, but this place was never intended to be something built by mortals who delved too deeply into the Negative plane's secrets- it was specifically the headquarters and home of the Destroyer, the "bad Overgod," Thangorodoth. Here was where he was fought to his first defeat, here was where he was killed by the demigod that first time... and here was where his last mortal avatar would awaken to his true potential and origin at last when the time was right.</p><p></p><p>Now, back before 3rd Edition, I never had any concept of this place having <em>uses</em> or <em>functions</em> besides being a home for the Ultimate Evil, but when I revised my old cosmos for the new game I began to think seriously about such things. After all, one can reason, if Thangorodoth is an Overgod who helped <em>make</em> the Negative Plane what it is- and among other things, that means a plane which destroys everything that enters it- and furthermore, given his appellation as the Destroyer- why in blazes would he need or want a city for his home or headquarters? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to just roam the endless emptiness close to the heart of the plane, annihilating any matter or creatures that made it that far and maintaining the purity of his domain?</p><p></p><p>The reasoning went something like this: Thangorodoth had minions, so those minions needed a place to gather and learn their master's desires. But then, I reasoned, why stay there, in a place that was almost surely as hostile to the minions as to anything else? Well, the minions had to be Antigods or powerful Undead, I reasoned. But where did all these minions come from, then, especially the Antigods if they're so dangerous to standard gods? And, the answer to that question gave the Desolation its function at last. For, the obvious answer was of course that these minions existed and came there because Thangorodoth <em>made</em> them using his mighty dark powers. And to simplify his "creation" (really conversion) of new minions, would it not make sense for him to build a device to help?</p><p></p><p>So, the Desolation got its function. It was specifically designed and built to take creatures brought there from other places, and convert them into forms more to Thangorodoth's liking- and utterly loyal to him once so converted. Originally my notion was that normal living creatures would become undead, using templates; typically they would become Liches and/or Vampires since those were all I had when 3E was released. Gods, of course, would and could also be converted, from standard Gods to Antigods. Finally, when the IH Bestiary came out and I got a look at the Unelemental, I knew that Thangorodoth had a hand in their (non)existence too- so I decided that the Desolation could also be used to convert creatures of any sort- living or non- to Unelementals.</p><p></p><p>The Desolation of the Destroyer is an enormous edifice, literally the size of a city even in modern-Earth terms. It extends for tens of miles from the central core, where the Device in the Desolation is encysted, and altogether is about 150 miles across. In part, this is because Thangorodoth's original form as a Sidereal was so immense- he would take a form resembling an enormous, tentacled sphere of utter darkness about 1000 feet in diameter. Naturally, his edifice would be built to match his scale. It's constructed out of Voidstone, so it is extremely dangerous for material beings (or for that matter any being not built from Negative energy directly) to touch; given that most travelers who arrive there will be using the standard "change the direction of gravity and fall" method of travel, this makes a trip through its extent a hazardous game of chicken at best. It consists of hundreds of block-like buildings, forming various geometrical shapes, all connected by spars and buttresses like some nightmarish castle or cathedral except that there is no single "down" direction. The Desolation is a truly alien construct, from the perspective of Material Plane inhabitants; it doesn't so much as give a passing nod to gravity and is structured in all three spatial dimensions from the get-go.</p><p></p><p>Individual buildings are either "living" space for minions, or conversion facilities for making new minions; either way, there are no doors or windows of any kind in their outer walls. To enter a given building, one must channel enough Negative Energy into the structure in question, either by using a Command Undead (or similar ability to channel Negative energy) at a high enough DC, or by casting <em>Inflict</em> spells powerful enough to open the way. The exact DC or necessary threshold varies by structure, of course- and the ones which convert gods to Antigods actually require expending QP as well as casting Epic magic (or using a 10th-level spell slot) on an <em>Inflict</em>- or <em>Energy Drain</em>-type effect.</p><p></p><p>Of course, as the write-up for the Device in the Desolation states, my current concept is that the Device was there first, and Thangorodoth constructed the Desolation around it- but originally, I simply posited that the Device was a machine he created to help him keep track of all the information regarding his minions, plans, and targets. It wasn't until I had IH Ascension that I began to think that it should be different, and maybe he hadn't created it but just found and used it. This is in the largest building of the Desolation, the veritable Heart of Darkness itself, an enormous geodesic sphere a full mile across- which is actually just a hollow shell built around the Device like a pearl around a plastic seed-sphere. This hollow shell, too, needs a 10th-level or Epic spell slot used to cast a Negative-energy effect at it, to open it, but nothing else- and once inside a careful examination proves that the Device is of very different design from the Desolation that surrounds it.</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Rings of the Spire</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> Way back in the post on the configuration of my "central" cosmos, I mentioned these. Since my version of the Spire is infinitely tall, it has no "top" for the city of Sigil to float above; therefore, Sigil instead floats around it about 1000 miles above the ground (Sigil is, of course, a large ring when viewed from the outside, though it is for some dimensional-warping reason impossible to reach that outside from within the city itself). Well, I reasoned after making this determination, if one ring exists- why not others? And so, the Rings of the Spire were born.</p><p></p><p>Sigil, of course, needs no introduction to most people reading this- it was the heart of the 2nd Edition Planescape setting, and was imported into 3rd Edition in the Manual of the Planes. It may or may not still exist in 4E, with its radical reconstruction of the multiverse; I haven't read the 4E Manual of the Planes so I don't know. But, in my cosmos, Sigil is postulated to be the "first" (meaning lowest- closest to the ground of the Outlands far below) of the Rings of the Spire. It's a planar metropolis ruled by the enigmatic Lady of Pain and her apparent minions, the silent Dabus who communicate only in projected rebus puzzles. No deity ever appears there, and the few who try are invariably confronted by the Lady of Pain herself and forced away (if not killed outright).</p><p></p><p>As mentioned in the post on gods between Greater and Sidereal, I supposed that this is because she herself is an Elder Goddess; very few deities in the cosmos beyond Sigil would actually be powerful enough to mount a serious challenge to her and those who are would have very little interest in doing so. More importantly, this is because Sigil is the Lady's Divine Realm, and like other Divine Realms its owner can choose to prevent dimensional travel by undesirables (in this case other deities) from reaching it. And since Sigil is <em>only</em> reachable via dimensional travel, well, that just makes it pretty difficult for deities to get in, doesn't it?</p><p></p><p>But Sigil isn't the only Ring. The "second" Ring, as I've hinted at in previous posts on this and other threads, is called the Crystal Library in my setting, and is home to Annam- the prototypical Elder God. Within the Library, Annam keeps reminders- usually physical objects but also written stories and recordings made on other media (this is not a cosmos without technology, so he can and does have stuff like tapes, DVDs, or holograms)- of events which have been "erased" from history by action of temporal paradoxes, use of Rectify or the Sword of Time, or other such powers. Somewhere in the Crystal Library, for example, one can find an exhibit dedicated to the world and cosmos of the LeShay, and a record of exactly what they did to so radically alter it and leave themselves bereft of a home. Elsewhere, one can find records of Nexus Events which involved time travel (and honestly, given the nature of Nexus Events, this mostly means all of them), <em>including those that haven't happened yet</em>.</p><p></p><p>That last point made the place of great interest to my players, when they heard about it, but one last feature of the Crystal Library makes it rather difficult to use this: anybody <strong>leaving</strong> the Crystal Library by any means must make a Will save to retain the information they gained there, and any items or objects taken from any of the exhibits is mysteriously "lost" (in fact, teleported right back to the exhibits they came from- even out of a Portable Hole or other similar storage device) in transit. Even if the Will save to retain memories succeeds, it must be made again a round later, and then again, and again, until eventually even the strongest mind succumbs and loses the information. That said, it is possible to get around this restriction if one is canny enough; my players did it by using daily <em>Wishes</em> after leaving (they were young deities at the time, just raised to Demigodhood) to record the soon-to-be-lost information on books once they were in another place and the <em>Gate</em> to the Crystal Library had closed. Their minds forgot it, but their characters had new books containing some very interesting fiction which proved to be helpful later.</p><p></p><p>Annam lives in the Crystal Library alone, and never leaves it; as with the Lady and Sigil, nobody gets in without his permission. In fact, I posited that he placed an effect on the Library such that it works similarly to the <a href="http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Fidelius_Charm" target="_blank">Fidelius Charm</a> from the Harry Potter series- to whit, you can't know where it is until Annam himself invites you and opens the way for you. I also decided that Annam created and maintains the Library to help him pursue Sidereal Ascension via the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/267554-sidereal-ascension-methods.html#post4987046" target="_blank">Omniscience method</a>, and though I never stated this in game, it was an obvious enough inference that at least one player suggested it.</p><p></p><p>No other Rings are known to be inhabited, though many others exist; the exact number of them is not known, but could be infinite given the infinite extent of the Spire upon which they're all "strung." Any uninhabited Ring, once found, can be claimed as a Divine Realm by any deity in the usual manner, just as if it were a plane in its own right- but Rings carry some extras that normal Divine Realms don't. First, since Rings of the Spire are in effect miniature demiplanes, but planes <em>without Sidereal souls of their own</em>, any one deity that makes a Divine Realm in one becomes a sort of "mini-Sidereal" in the process. <strong>Only</strong> single deities who claim a Ring gain these benefits; if a Ring is claimed by a party or pantheon of deities, then it is no different from any other Divine Realm elsewhere in the cosmos. But, a single owner of a Ring gains the ability to extend his or her Divine Aura across the entire Ring, if desired, at will; the deity can toggle between the normal Divine Aura or this Ring-wide version once per round as a free action. Second, the deity gains Cosmic String while the Ring is his or her Divine Realm; nothing that is not more powerful than the Ring's owner can actually kill him or her while the Ring is the deity's Realm. Third, the deity gets Cosmic Consciousness across the whole Ring, regardless of what the character's usual sensory limits may be; the Ring grants impressions of everything that occurs within its extent to its owner. It may even be, though I never stated this in game nor examined the implications of the idea from a rules-and-consequences perspective, that by maintaining a Ring as one's Divine Realm, a deity can actually pursue Sidereal Ascension via the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/267554-sidereal-ascension-methods.html#post4987077" target="_blank">Birth method</a>. Of course, gaining enough HD and QP to make the transition without ever personally leaving one's Divine Realm wouldn't be at all easy, and I think that upon becoming a full Sidereal the (ex-)deity in question would lose the Ring and it would revert to the "blank" state once more.</p><p></p><p>Of course, these benefits aren't the whole story, or more Rings would be owned than actually are. A Ring used as a Divine Realm also carries one very large drawback for its owner- the owner can never <em>leave</em> the Ring by any means while it is the deity's Divine Realm. Avatars and Aspects of the deity can come and go normally, but the deity's own manifestation is forever bound to the Ring while it is the character's Divine Realm. An attempted <em>Plane Shift</em> will simply fail to work; if a <em>Plane Shift</em> is cast by an ally to include the character, then everybody <em>except</em> the bound deity will be Shifted normally. If the bound deity (or somebody else) opens a <em>Gate</em> or similar portal off the Ring, then anybody other than the bound deity can use said portal normally- but the bound deity will walk through it without going anywhere, as if it were a mere illusion. One PC (a god of Secrets) discovered this to his extreme chagrin shortly after achieving Demigodhood; he wanted to claim a Ring and make a new Library to someday rival the Crystal Library in scope. After he discovered this drawback, he spent the 10x QP to pull back what he'd put into it to make it his Divine Realm, and thus pull <em>out</em> of the Ring; this freed him to roam the cosmos (and later, other cosmoi) again.</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Path of the Ultimate Gate</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> This place, located in a small demiplane deep in a remote location within the Astral Plane- so remote, mind you, that even deities would take centuries to travel there without teleportation or opening a direct <em>Gate</em>- is a lonely, rocky outcropping set into a barren desert without even a few stunted trees to break the lifeless feel. The air feels warm, but somehow stale and dead, and the impression of incredible <em>age</em> is impossible to escape there. The outcropping has a single cave, a mere 10 feet wide and high, which leads into the rock and somehow manages to extend longer on the inside than the available space on the outside allows- eventually opening out into a chamber carved into the rock. In that chamber, crumbling and weathered by countless eons of time, there is a sort of impression of a carving on one wall- barely visible even when one is specifically looking for it- of a tall arch, and a hand on top of that arch which appears to be reaching for something above it and just out of its grasp.</p><p></p><p>This place has one purpose, and that is to facilitate transitions to the Far Realm. In that chamber, by using the proper rituals in conjunction with the spell, one can cast a perfectly ordinary <em>Gate</em> to any desired layer of the Far Realm- provided of course that one can specify the desired layer exactly enough (malicious interpretation of wording should be the norm here). One can also <em>Plane Shift</em> to the Far Realm, even without having an appropriate material component to shift with.</p><p></p><p>Finally, and this is how the place saw use in my game, one can perform a similar ritual with the Silver Key to "translate" oneself into the Far Realm- but more on that in the next post (which will actually discuss that artifact). I will mention here, though, what should be obvious to anybody who has read the stories from which I took inspiration for the Silver Key: the cavern described above is a match for the one in those stories.</p><p> </p><p><strong><span style="font-size: 12px">The Shrine of the Ninefold Path</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> This last planar edifice never saw on-screen use in my game, though the PCs knew about it and had vague plans of going there for a long time. As a result, I never actually gave it a full description; I just stated that somewhere in a demiplane in a remote corner of the Astral Plane (not, perhaps, <em>quite</em> as remote as the Path of the Ultimate Gate, but still remote) is a temple dedicated to no known god or pantheon. Within that temple, carvings and symbols exist that have never been translated into any known language. The place is divided into nine wings, and the name of this edifice was suggested by the discoverers based on that number and the impression they got (from looking at the carvings, though they didn't truly understand them) that they were intended as some sort of instructions or map.</p><p></p><p>And based on hints I've dropped elsewhere, the purpose of this place is probably obvious to most readers. The "Ninefold Path" of the title is, of course, the nine methods of Sidereal Ascension, and the Shrine is nothing less than an instruction book left behind by Something Greater to show deities (and others) how to evolve to the next level of existence. The carvings are enigmatic in the extreme, and even viewing the original Shrine, one would need to make Knowledge checks (likely Religion, or Arcana) to discern their precise meaning. DCs for these checks should be set in the high hundreds, certainly no less than 400 for even basic information, if one is using my table for deity advancement. Of course, more than merely nine methods exist for Sidereal Ascension, and <strong>all</strong> methods are in fact recorded in the Shrine regardless of number, but the nine <em>main</em> methods are the focus of the nine wings of the edifice.</p><p></p><p>It is possible, though since I never detailed this place I never decided on this, that one can perform special rituals at the Shrine to facilitate attempts at Sidereal Ascension somehow. This could make the "paths" easier to follow, or perhaps just help them along (for example, perhaps it is possible there to cast an Epic spell which can cause all mortals on a particular Material Plane to worship a single deity- which would facilitate the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/267554-sidereal-ascension-methods.html#post4987058" target="_blank">Worship Method</a>).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="paradox42, post: 5210884, member: 29746"] [b]Locations With Soul[/b] So, on to Planar Edifices. As the title of this post implies, these were really meant to be a sort of crossover between artifacts (specifically Soul Objects) and planar locations; of the artifacts I discussed in the previous post, the Pit, the Ring, and the Device in the Desolation could arguably go into [I]this[/I] post just as easily as that one. But, for most purposes, a Planar Edifice is an at-least-building-sized construct existing on some plane, or demiplane, which has a specific purpose and (usually) grants powers to those who reach it and act towards that purpose. It's worth noting that most Planar Edifices used in my game were never explicitly linked to specific beings; all of the ones I'll detail in this post were created by (and thus Soul Objects of) Sidereal beings at the very lowest. It's possible the Demiurge itself created the Path of the Ultimate Gate and the Shrine of the Ninefold Path, but then again it's just as possible that those were created by the new Seventh First One and simply existed retroactively to their actual creation (that is, they existed backwards in time as well as forwards). As with the previous post, there are eight "items" I plan to discuss here. Those eight are: the Obsidian Tower, the Dark Lens, the Rift of Life, the Cloud of Secrets, the Desolation of the Destroyer, the Rings of the Spire, the Path of the Ultimate Gate, and the Shrine of the Ninefold Path. [B][SIZE=3]The Obsidian Tower[/SIZE][/B] Of the Planar Edifices I've mentioned in threads prior to this one, this edifice is the one I've mentioned most often. In part, this is because it was one of the most-visited by my PCs; also, it was the very first that any of my parties went to. This one started its life with the Planescape Inner Planes supplement, a soft-cover book released later in the line which contained (in typical Planescape fashion) first-person accounts of what to expect in the Elemental, Energy, and Para- and Quasi-Elemental Planes. The book is chock-full of ideas, and if any DM out there has the chance to pick up a copy, I recommend it without hesitation unless you're running 4E. The radical changes wrought upon the base cosmology with 4E render it largely obsolete, though you can probably still get good ideas that could be "transplanted." But it's one idea that was transplanted with which we're concerning ourselves here. Specifically, the book mentions a quiet place deep in the Plane of Minerals where even natives rarely go, that is said to contain a forge of mythic power. The [B]reason[/B] even the natives stay away, however, is that it is apparently not completely abandoned, because sometimes travelers who go there... disappear. Nobody knows who or what built it, let alone why, nor what guards it. I'm leaving out a few details from the original, here, but that's the general gist- an honestly the original description isn't much more than what I typed above. For some reason, though, this idea grabbed hold of my brain and wouldn't let go. I knew I had to have it in my game, when it came time to transform the old setting into the 3rd Edition version, and so I set about giving it more details. First, when I sat down to do this, I had recently moved and so was going off old memories of the description rather than actually digging my book out of whatever box it was in (not that I even knew for sure which one that was). So I got the name wrong- the original version was called the Tower of Lead, but I just remembered that it was a "dark" tower made of heavy materials with ominous overtones. So, I thought of obsidian- black volcanic glass- which also, incidentally, is the material that they supposed Isengard to be made of for the [I]Lord of the Rings[/I] movies- and used that. My tower became the Obsidian Tower. To be slightly more specific, the description I used in my game is that in a remote and mostly-forgotten corner of the Plane of Minerals, the rocks get heavy and dark- the crystals so common throughout the rest of the plane give way to ores, veins of dark and heavy metals such as lead, and minerals such as coal or onyx which absorb more light than they reflect. In an immense cavern (half a mile long by about 1,000 feet wide) formed within this "dark zone," there stands a large and lonely tower about 100 feet tall made of blackest obsidian, rising out of a squat, squarish building (of the same material) obeying no architectural standards known to the modern era. Where I further differed from the original was in giving it the fleshed-out, game-mechanics-compatible details that could make the place work in an actual game, and make it an interesting (if scary) place to visit. First, I knew that I wanted the forge inside the tower to be a place where one could craft full artifacts if one were so inclined, and second, I knew that this had to be a place made by the Overgods (which meant that some of their powers would be left in it). So I studied the item crafting rules carefully and came up with two essential components to the place, to make it an item-crafting location of tremendous power. The first of these was that the anvil and tools there were of such magnificence, and in fact contained such incredible magical potency, that they would reduce the crafting time of any item created there: I wanted an absurdly powerful speedup, so I chose to borrow from [I]Star Trek II[/I] and make "hours seem like days." That is, any item crafted at the anvil would take only one hour of crafting per 1,000 gp value, rather than the normal 1 day of time. Furthermore, I stated that the crafter who was using the anvil would not need to rest, eat, or drink while using it, so you could work 24/7 and never get tired or otherwise need to stop. This would obviously translate to a huge speedup over normal item crafting! Finally, as if that weren't enough, the tools would grant any user a +30 bonus to any Craft skill check- of any subtype- when in use. The second feature of the Obsidian Tower was its Forge, which contained an arguably [B]more[/B] useful power than the anvil and tools did: the Forge could consume existing items fed into its maw, and transform them into "raw crafting stuff" which could then be taken to the anvil and shaped to form literally any desired object. In game terms, this meant that you could take an old item you weren't using any more, feed it into the Forge, and get its full crafting value- [I]in both gp and XP-[/I] out of it, to create a new item. So, this meant that by using the Forge, an item-crafting character could in theory spend old items the party didn't want to use to create new items they did want, without going through the rigmarole of selling the items in a market and using the money to buy raw materials for the new items. More importantly, said crafter could do this [I]without even using his own XP[/I] if he had enough unwanted items to toss in and burn. The note from the original book about "something" being left behind that didn't like visitors to the Tower of Lead led me to posit that the Overgods had left an actual Guardian in place, near the Obsidian Tower, which would be capable of merging with the surrounding cavern so perfectly as to be unnoticeable even to natives of the Plane of Minerals. This thing had to be ridiculously strong, so powerful that even beings just short of gods would fear it. I was doing this long before the Epic Level Handbook was even announced, let alone the Immortals Handbook, so I sincerely hoped I wouldn't have to stat the Guardian up for a very, very long time! My thought on the Guardian (and in fact, the Tower itself) was that it had been abandoned by its original makers, but that gods could use it with (relative or actual) impunity. Mortals, however, would have to be nearly gods themselves to be able to take on the Guardian and win, so mortals who used it would only be able to stay for about a month before the Guardian took notice of them and acted against them. And of course, if they were stupid enough to try [I]stealing[/I] the tools, anvil, or (gods help them) the Forge itself, the Guardian would be all [I]over[/I] them as they left. When the IH came along, of course, several years later, there was a very interesting bit of correspondence between my old Obsidian Tower and the list of Divine Abilities: in effect, it now seemed as though the anvil granted its user Divine Architect in addition to its mighty Craft bonus, and ability to sustain the user. My old concern about gods was now answered: gods [B]could[/B] use the Tower, but would rarely bother doing so, because it didn't really offer them much benefit besides the cost savings of the Forge. I also statted up the Guardian, using some helpful nasty monsters posted on UK's site as a base, but I won't go into that here. Suffice it to say, the thing is nasty (CR in the high 40s) and not to be tangled with by any but the absolute strongest mortals. Also, the Guardian and the Tower are one, in a metaphysical sense, so if the Guardian is destroyed, the Forge and anvil and tools suddenly stop working- and continue not working until the Guardian regenerates (which takes about a month). This makes working at the Tower enough of a pain for even gods to do so sparingly, even though the Guardian is really no threat to even a single Demigod under normal circumstances (at least, my 100-HD Demigods). [B][SIZE=3]The Dark Lens[/SIZE][/B] Obviously, I didn't stop with the Obsidian Tower. Since, in part, my retooled cosmos was about balancing out things that seemed unbalanced in the original version, I decided that giving the Plane of Minerals a strange edifice left behind by the Overgods wasn't enough. The other Positive Quasi-Elemental Planes should have some too, I reasoned. But what would these other three do? I needed something (more specifically, three somethings) that could somehow match the known functions of the Obsidian Tower in a rough power-quotient sense, while still being very different functions that would be obviously tied to the planes they were on. I decided that if Minerals represented valuable materials and objects, in this sense, and therefore allowed better crafting of items and art, then Steam (because of the clouds) would probably be tied to Knowledge and would have a sort of super-library in it somewhere. This is what eventually became the Cloud of Secrets. Lightning and Radiance gave me fits, but I recognized shortly after coming up with the idea for the Cloud that there was another area where characters could make their own "stuff" that matched items in utility and mechanics: spell research (and psionic power research). My dilemma was, which Quasi-plane would get the "spell research" helper, and why? Furthermore, what would the fourth Quasi-plane get? Eventually, I solved the dilemma, and put the Rift of Life in Lightning and the spell-research location into Radiance. This left me with a different dilemma: in a plane dominated by light, above everything else, what the hells could an edifice like the Obsidian Tower possibly be based upon? Well, as the name of this edifice implies, I eventually decided that since a key attribute of research was [I]focus[/I] on one's goal, that a plane of endless Light could possibly host an enormous Lens to help produce that. In actuality, the Dark Lens is just the external manifestation of the real find, which is a library of unparalleled comprehensiveness and depth hosted within the bigger-inside-than-outside interior. It appears to be an enormous, perfectly circular lens of crystal dark enough to appear black from the outside, roughly 300 feet in diameter and 70 feet thick in the center. There are no openings visible to the interior, even to characters using [I]True Seeing[/I] or other Illusion-defeating effects, but a successful DC 25 Spellcraft or Psicraft check will allow a character to discover the way in anyway and use it. This Lens is located in a region of the plane that appears unusually dim, with the only colors visible being dark red and violet. To many who find the place, it feels eerily like the Lens is somehow absorbing the power of the plane and is thus itself causing this strange dimming. Like the Obsidian Tower, the Dark Lens has a Guardian, but this Guardian does not remain hidden- it instead orbits the Dark Lens (staying about 200 feet away from its equator) and is just visible as a sort of translucent shadow of itself while not active and attacking. When I described it to my players, I said "It's a vaguely humanoid, red shape about 60 feet tall, and looks like some vision of an Ancient war robot inflated to massive proportions." On the inside, the library is immense, though of no fixed size- in truth its size is best described as "whatever size it needs to be." The crystal of the Lens is translucent, when seen from within, and lets in enough light from the plane outside to make reading easy and comfortable. Any Knowledge checks made specifically (and solely) for the purpose of advancing spell or psionic power research, as well as all Spellcraft or Psicraft skill checks, get a +30 bonus when made inside the library, and all research is conducted on the basis of 1 hour inside the Dark Lens = 1 day outside it. This exactly mirrors the item-crafting of the Obsidian Tower of course, but more importantly my group decided that the existence of the Dark Lens thus implied the existence of a "Divine Researcher" Divine Ability to mirror Divine Architect. And so we made one: its [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/197014-custom-divine-abilities-portfolios-etc-10.html#post4505387"]writeup[/URL] can be found in the Custom Divine Powers thread. In addition to providing the bonus to Spellcraft/Psicraft and specific Knowledge checks, the Dark Lens also contains a unique item specifically made to help spell or psionic power research: the Blank Book. This is an immense book (about 6 feet by 4 feet when closed, though it will always be found open when a character arrives at the Lens unless other visitors are also present) set on a squat pedestal in the largest open space in the library, directly underneath the highest part of the domed crystal ceiling. The pages are not made of any recognizable form of paper, and yet it is clearly meant to be just that. Any ink which is dripped or written onto any page of the Blank Book swiftly vanishes into the mysterious "paper" to leave it blank again, as is any marking made by charcoal, pencil, or other non-liquid writing tool; pages which are cut from the Book lose this property and may be written upon normally, but as soon as one leaves the Book and comes back, or even just turns away and then looks at it again, the damage is mysteriously repaired. The Blank Book's real purpose is to transfer knowledge: to use it, one need only hold up a magical scroll or psionic powerstone, or a magical book/Tome such as a Tome of Clear Thought, and touch it to a page. The item will flash brightly and burn away as though used, but the effect of the spell(s) or power(s) it contained do not occur: instead, whatever GP and XP was spent to create the scroll or stone, is drawn out of its remains and gifted to the character who just "burnt" it. This GP and XP can not be used for level-up purposes, and it disappears as soon as the character leaves the Dark Lens by any means; its only use is to be spent on spell or power research. As a final note here, I'll state that my players spent considerable time in their high Epic levels (pre-divinity) searching out [I]Wish[/I] scrolls and stat-booster Tomes, specifically so they could burn them in the Blank Book or the Forge of the Obsidian Tower to create new spells/powers/items. [B][SIZE=3]The Rift of Life[/SIZE][/B] So, with the two obvious Fonts of Creation (the collective name given to the four Quasi-plane Planar Edifices, the Obsidian Tower, Dark Lens, Rift of Life, and Cloud of Secrets) detailed, it now remains to describe the other two. This one was the most obscure during my campaign, and only used twice in the entire run- neither time occurring "on screen." In some ways, though, this is the most powerful of the four, and certainly would be a highly-sought-after goal for many gods looking to build worlds. This was the hardest one to figure out, in no small part because creating life is not something the D&D game rules were really set up to handle. I placed this one in the Plane of Lightning because of the Frankenstein reference, and continuing that logic led me to posit that its main use (in the modern era at least) was to allow casters/manifesters to create Constructs more quickly and easily than normal. As a less-obvious corollary of this, the Rift can be used to bring sentience to items more quickly than is otherwise possible, though since the Obsidian Tower could also be used in that manner (given that imbuing intelligence in items is a function of item creation) and the Rift of Life has no equivalent to the Forge, it rarely is. The Rift of Life is a cavernous space (about half a mile across) in the Plane of Lightning where no cloud goes, surrounded on all sides by clouds so dark as to be nearly black. Though lightning flashes within these clouds constantly, putting occasional flashes of light into the otherwise-dark Rift, no arc of lightning ever penetrates the space itself, not even to strike the clouds on the other side. Floating in the center of this space is a strange cage made of strands of some sort of exotic metal, which refuses to retain a single consistent color or reflective index, woven and braided about each other so as to form cords, rods and bars which are much thicker than the strands themselves. The cage is roughly spherical in shape, and wires of the odd metal extend off from it on all sides to apparently connect it to the cloud layer surrounding the Rift; the cage is usually about 30 feet in diameter when first encountered, but can extend (via a weird shifting/sliding of the strands about each other, and cunningly-hidden hinges which reveal the rods and struts to be composed of thinner ones like a huge Hoberman sphere) to be more than 300 feet across when necessary. While in use, lightning from the clouds strikes the wires connecting them to the cage, causing the cage to crackle and dance with powerful electricity and other energies generated by the interaction of lightning and metal- creatures outside the cage are never struck, but anything within the cage is (to put it bluntly) lit up like a Christmas tree. The Rift of Life enhances creation time for Construct creatures, or the imbuing of intelligence in items, by the same 24:1 ratio as the Dark Lens and the Obsidian Tower; that is, each hour spent at the Rift essentially equals a day of work elsewhere. Additionally, any Construct brought to life at the Rift will be truly alive in the "fifth force" sense, and imbued with a proper soul, which is inclined to be grateful to its creator and therefore never has any chance of going berserk or out of control (as some golems are known to do). Also, a character who comes to the Rift with an Epic "Origin of Species" spell or equivalent means of creating non-Construct life, finds that the casting time is reduced by the same 24:1 ratio (minimum casting time 1 round), and the created creature is always capable of reproduction (even if the effect producing it normally does not allow for such). In other words, the Rift of Life effectively grants Great Breath to anybody creating life there. Every single creature created at the Rift has an INT score of at least 3, even if the effect producing the creature would normally create one with less INT or no INT score at all. Finally, the Rift of Life has the ability to bring any dead non-Sidereal creature back to life, provided there is a body to place in the cage. No material components are required to cast [I]Raise Dead[/I] or [I]Resurrection[/I]-type spells there, nor must any XP be spent to cast them. Using the Rift this way always drains a level/HD from the target creature being raised, however, even if the spell used normally doesn't do that (such as [I]True Resurrection[/I]). It is even possible to bring a creature back in the Rift without using a spell, though doing so is dangerous: the target must make a Will save against a DC of its own number of HD +1 per day it has been dead (or undead), or else it comes back entirely insane (as if affected by an [I]Insanity[/I] spell with Instantaneous duration, irreversible except by use of the Alter Reality Cosmic Ability). To accomplish this risky spell-less resurrection, the body must be placed within the cage and left there with the cage active, for 1 hour per HD/level. The Rift of Life has a Guardian, much like the Obsidian Tower and the Dark Lens, but it was never given stats or a description. Suffice it to say, the Guardian slumbers in the dark clouds surrounding the Rift until activated by an unauthorized user staying too long (the limit is usually about a month, but all time spent at the Rift counts- even over multiple visits). [B][SIZE=3]The Cloud of Secrets[/SIZE][/B] The fourth and last Font of Creation was the one used by far the most often in my campaign, both because it was simple for any character to use and because they became "authorized users" (which meant that the Guardians of the Fonts considered them harmless and wouldn't activate or attack based on their presence) fairly early into godhood. This one doesn't actually let one create anything directly, but the information one [B]gets[/B] at this Font can be very handy for creating things later (if you ask the right questions). In effect, being inside the Plane of Steam, I figured that the only proper form for a Font (being that they're all "dark" materials for their respective planes) to take here would be a Cloud. And what do clouds (particularly dark ones) surround? Secret things. So, Cloud of Secrets. I also took a cue from the description given to the personality of Steam (Quasi-)Elementals, in Planescape, which included the quirk that they all tend to hoard information carefully and make consummate spies. This led me to associate information with the Plane of Steam, and I decided that perhaps the Steam Elementals were so obsessed with secrets because something in their home plane made them that way. The idea then became, what if there is, hidden in some cloud of steam in some remote corner of the Plane of Steam, a library or archive of the most profound, powerful, and potentially explosive/damaging secrets in the multiverse? This became the initial idea for the place, and as I said above, it was the second one I came up with after the Obsidian Tower. But it didn't stay that way. In the end, after going back and forth on several ways to handle this place, I decided that what it really does is enhance Knowledge checks. Two of the other Fonts- the Lens and the Tower- enhance associated skills, and if there were any skills in D&D associated with creating life, I would have had the Rift enhance those exactly the same way. But for this place, I decided that it would be simple in mechanics and use: when you go to the Cloud, you ask it questions, and it gives you answers. There are no books, no devices (at least, no obvious ones), and nothing to read or see unless it shows you such (which it can do via illusions or [I]Sendings[/I] of direct data, like a file downloaded into the questioner's mind- whatever happens to be most convenient). Just ask a question, and roll a Knowledge check in whatever subcategory seems best. The check gets a +30 (unnamed) bonus, and the answer (if you beat whatever the DC might be) is given instantly. One thing I annoyed my players with many times was what the Cloud says when you [B]don't[/B] beat the DC- in that case, its most common non-answer is "You are not ready for transcendence." That drove them nuts. :) Physically, the Cloud of Secrets is just a particularly dark cloud of steam deep within its plane, in a remote corner that Steam Elementals do their best to persuade travelers away from (though they won't actually fight to stop anybody from going there- instead they'll just sigh, shrug, nod knowingly, or otherwise imply that the traveler's chosen direction is not a good one). Once there, one gets an [I]impression[/I] of structure hidden within the roiling clouds of mist, just out of sight, always caught out of the corner of one's eye but never there when looked at directly- and never anything tangible or physical. The impressions of structure are always for something insanely complex, with patterns of lines extending off in hidden directions like some enormous extradimensional computer motherboard. Answers, when they come, are usually given telepathically to the questioner, though sometimes (for reasons known only to itself and the DM) the Cloud actually creates audible sounds so other creatures [B]with[/B] the questioner can also hear the answers. Where this Font really differs from the other three- and the reason the Steam Elementals don't ever bother with combat to keep outsiders away- is that the Guardian of the Cloud never sleeps. It is always active, and always patrolling the region around the Cloud, and it recognizes intruders within a minute of their arrival every time. It moves slowly, but inexorably, and those who tarry too long in the Cloud after getting an answer or two usually don't come out again to bring the secrets they gleaned into the wider cosmos. The Cloud of Secrets was also one Planar Edifice that I gave my players an explicit connection/origin for; it is in fact a Soul Object of Thought. As a result, its knowledge (and ability to answer questions) is nearly limitless, but everything it says has a tendency to advance Thought's agenda (insane though that may be) and/or make Far Realm intrusions into the multiverse more likely. [B][SIZE=3]The Desolation of the Destroyer[/SIZE][/B] This place is arguably the oldest Planar Edifice in terms of my own thinking about the multiverse, because way back when I was coming up with the story about the Sword(s) of Time, the Destroyer, and the Tertiars and their early doings in the multiverse, I knew that somewhere in the Negative "Material" Plane was a secret place where the energy concentrated like nowhere else, where actual [I]structures[/I] like some sort of nightmarish [I]city[/I] existed. Now, modern D&D has the City of Moil, true, but this place was never intended to be something built by mortals who delved too deeply into the Negative plane's secrets- it was specifically the headquarters and home of the Destroyer, the "bad Overgod," Thangorodoth. Here was where he was fought to his first defeat, here was where he was killed by the demigod that first time... and here was where his last mortal avatar would awaken to his true potential and origin at last when the time was right. Now, back before 3rd Edition, I never had any concept of this place having [I]uses[/I] or [I]functions[/I] besides being a home for the Ultimate Evil, but when I revised my old cosmos for the new game I began to think seriously about such things. After all, one can reason, if Thangorodoth is an Overgod who helped [I]make[/I] the Negative Plane what it is- and among other things, that means a plane which destroys everything that enters it- and furthermore, given his appellation as the Destroyer- why in blazes would he need or want a city for his home or headquarters? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to just roam the endless emptiness close to the heart of the plane, annihilating any matter or creatures that made it that far and maintaining the purity of his domain? The reasoning went something like this: Thangorodoth had minions, so those minions needed a place to gather and learn their master's desires. But then, I reasoned, why stay there, in a place that was almost surely as hostile to the minions as to anything else? Well, the minions had to be Antigods or powerful Undead, I reasoned. But where did all these minions come from, then, especially the Antigods if they're so dangerous to standard gods? And, the answer to that question gave the Desolation its function at last. For, the obvious answer was of course that these minions existed and came there because Thangorodoth [I]made[/I] them using his mighty dark powers. And to simplify his "creation" (really conversion) of new minions, would it not make sense for him to build a device to help? So, the Desolation got its function. It was specifically designed and built to take creatures brought there from other places, and convert them into forms more to Thangorodoth's liking- and utterly loyal to him once so converted. Originally my notion was that normal living creatures would become undead, using templates; typically they would become Liches and/or Vampires since those were all I had when 3E was released. Gods, of course, would and could also be converted, from standard Gods to Antigods. Finally, when the IH Bestiary came out and I got a look at the Unelemental, I knew that Thangorodoth had a hand in their (non)existence too- so I decided that the Desolation could also be used to convert creatures of any sort- living or non- to Unelementals. The Desolation of the Destroyer is an enormous edifice, literally the size of a city even in modern-Earth terms. It extends for tens of miles from the central core, where the Device in the Desolation is encysted, and altogether is about 150 miles across. In part, this is because Thangorodoth's original form as a Sidereal was so immense- he would take a form resembling an enormous, tentacled sphere of utter darkness about 1000 feet in diameter. Naturally, his edifice would be built to match his scale. It's constructed out of Voidstone, so it is extremely dangerous for material beings (or for that matter any being not built from Negative energy directly) to touch; given that most travelers who arrive there will be using the standard "change the direction of gravity and fall" method of travel, this makes a trip through its extent a hazardous game of chicken at best. It consists of hundreds of block-like buildings, forming various geometrical shapes, all connected by spars and buttresses like some nightmarish castle or cathedral except that there is no single "down" direction. The Desolation is a truly alien construct, from the perspective of Material Plane inhabitants; it doesn't so much as give a passing nod to gravity and is structured in all three spatial dimensions from the get-go. Individual buildings are either "living" space for minions, or conversion facilities for making new minions; either way, there are no doors or windows of any kind in their outer walls. To enter a given building, one must channel enough Negative Energy into the structure in question, either by using a Command Undead (or similar ability to channel Negative energy) at a high enough DC, or by casting [I]Inflict[/I] spells powerful enough to open the way. The exact DC or necessary threshold varies by structure, of course- and the ones which convert gods to Antigods actually require expending QP as well as casting Epic magic (or using a 10th-level spell slot) on an [I]Inflict[/I]- or [I]Energy Drain[/I]-type effect. Of course, as the write-up for the Device in the Desolation states, my current concept is that the Device was there first, and Thangorodoth constructed the Desolation around it- but originally, I simply posited that the Device was a machine he created to help him keep track of all the information regarding his minions, plans, and targets. It wasn't until I had IH Ascension that I began to think that it should be different, and maybe he hadn't created it but just found and used it. This is in the largest building of the Desolation, the veritable Heart of Darkness itself, an enormous geodesic sphere a full mile across- which is actually just a hollow shell built around the Device like a pearl around a plastic seed-sphere. This hollow shell, too, needs a 10th-level or Epic spell slot used to cast a Negative-energy effect at it, to open it, but nothing else- and once inside a careful examination proves that the Device is of very different design from the Desolation that surrounds it. [B][SIZE=3]The Rings of the Spire[/SIZE][/B] Way back in the post on the configuration of my "central" cosmos, I mentioned these. Since my version of the Spire is infinitely tall, it has no "top" for the city of Sigil to float above; therefore, Sigil instead floats around it about 1000 miles above the ground (Sigil is, of course, a large ring when viewed from the outside, though it is for some dimensional-warping reason impossible to reach that outside from within the city itself). Well, I reasoned after making this determination, if one ring exists- why not others? And so, the Rings of the Spire were born. Sigil, of course, needs no introduction to most people reading this- it was the heart of the 2nd Edition Planescape setting, and was imported into 3rd Edition in the Manual of the Planes. It may or may not still exist in 4E, with its radical reconstruction of the multiverse; I haven't read the 4E Manual of the Planes so I don't know. But, in my cosmos, Sigil is postulated to be the "first" (meaning lowest- closest to the ground of the Outlands far below) of the Rings of the Spire. It's a planar metropolis ruled by the enigmatic Lady of Pain and her apparent minions, the silent Dabus who communicate only in projected rebus puzzles. No deity ever appears there, and the few who try are invariably confronted by the Lady of Pain herself and forced away (if not killed outright). As mentioned in the post on gods between Greater and Sidereal, I supposed that this is because she herself is an Elder Goddess; very few deities in the cosmos beyond Sigil would actually be powerful enough to mount a serious challenge to her and those who are would have very little interest in doing so. More importantly, this is because Sigil is the Lady's Divine Realm, and like other Divine Realms its owner can choose to prevent dimensional travel by undesirables (in this case other deities) from reaching it. And since Sigil is [I]only[/I] reachable via dimensional travel, well, that just makes it pretty difficult for deities to get in, doesn't it? But Sigil isn't the only Ring. The "second" Ring, as I've hinted at in previous posts on this and other threads, is called the Crystal Library in my setting, and is home to Annam- the prototypical Elder God. Within the Library, Annam keeps reminders- usually physical objects but also written stories and recordings made on other media (this is not a cosmos without technology, so he can and does have stuff like tapes, DVDs, or holograms)- of events which have been "erased" from history by action of temporal paradoxes, use of Rectify or the Sword of Time, or other such powers. Somewhere in the Crystal Library, for example, one can find an exhibit dedicated to the world and cosmos of the LeShay, and a record of exactly what they did to so radically alter it and leave themselves bereft of a home. Elsewhere, one can find records of Nexus Events which involved time travel (and honestly, given the nature of Nexus Events, this mostly means all of them), [I]including those that haven't happened yet[/I]. That last point made the place of great interest to my players, when they heard about it, but one last feature of the Crystal Library makes it rather difficult to use this: anybody [B]leaving[/B] the Crystal Library by any means must make a Will save to retain the information they gained there, and any items or objects taken from any of the exhibits is mysteriously "lost" (in fact, teleported right back to the exhibits they came from- even out of a Portable Hole or other similar storage device) in transit. Even if the Will save to retain memories succeeds, it must be made again a round later, and then again, and again, until eventually even the strongest mind succumbs and loses the information. That said, it is possible to get around this restriction if one is canny enough; my players did it by using daily [I]Wishes[/I] after leaving (they were young deities at the time, just raised to Demigodhood) to record the soon-to-be-lost information on books once they were in another place and the [I]Gate[/I] to the Crystal Library had closed. Their minds forgot it, but their characters had new books containing some very interesting fiction which proved to be helpful later. Annam lives in the Crystal Library alone, and never leaves it; as with the Lady and Sigil, nobody gets in without his permission. In fact, I posited that he placed an effect on the Library such that it works similarly to the [URL="http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Fidelius_Charm"]Fidelius Charm[/URL] from the Harry Potter series- to whit, you can't know where it is until Annam himself invites you and opens the way for you. I also decided that Annam created and maintains the Library to help him pursue Sidereal Ascension via the [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/267554-sidereal-ascension-methods.html#post4987046"]Omniscience method[/URL], and though I never stated this in game, it was an obvious enough inference that at least one player suggested it. No other Rings are known to be inhabited, though many others exist; the exact number of them is not known, but could be infinite given the infinite extent of the Spire upon which they're all "strung." Any uninhabited Ring, once found, can be claimed as a Divine Realm by any deity in the usual manner, just as if it were a plane in its own right- but Rings carry some extras that normal Divine Realms don't. First, since Rings of the Spire are in effect miniature demiplanes, but planes [I]without Sidereal souls of their own[/I], any one deity that makes a Divine Realm in one becomes a sort of "mini-Sidereal" in the process. [B]Only[/B] single deities who claim a Ring gain these benefits; if a Ring is claimed by a party or pantheon of deities, then it is no different from any other Divine Realm elsewhere in the cosmos. But, a single owner of a Ring gains the ability to extend his or her Divine Aura across the entire Ring, if desired, at will; the deity can toggle between the normal Divine Aura or this Ring-wide version once per round as a free action. Second, the deity gains Cosmic String while the Ring is his or her Divine Realm; nothing that is not more powerful than the Ring's owner can actually kill him or her while the Ring is the deity's Realm. Third, the deity gets Cosmic Consciousness across the whole Ring, regardless of what the character's usual sensory limits may be; the Ring grants impressions of everything that occurs within its extent to its owner. It may even be, though I never stated this in game nor examined the implications of the idea from a rules-and-consequences perspective, that by maintaining a Ring as one's Divine Realm, a deity can actually pursue Sidereal Ascension via the [URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/267554-sidereal-ascension-methods.html#post4987077"]Birth method[/URL]. Of course, gaining enough HD and QP to make the transition without ever personally leaving one's Divine Realm wouldn't be at all easy, and I think that upon becoming a full Sidereal the (ex-)deity in question would lose the Ring and it would revert to the "blank" state once more. Of course, these benefits aren't the whole story, or more Rings would be owned than actually are. A Ring used as a Divine Realm also carries one very large drawback for its owner- the owner can never [I]leave[/I] the Ring by any means while it is the deity's Divine Realm. Avatars and Aspects of the deity can come and go normally, but the deity's own manifestation is forever bound to the Ring while it is the character's Divine Realm. An attempted [I]Plane Shift[/I] will simply fail to work; if a [I]Plane Shift[/I] is cast by an ally to include the character, then everybody [I]except[/I] the bound deity will be Shifted normally. If the bound deity (or somebody else) opens a [I]Gate[/I] or similar portal off the Ring, then anybody other than the bound deity can use said portal normally- but the bound deity will walk through it without going anywhere, as if it were a mere illusion. One PC (a god of Secrets) discovered this to his extreme chagrin shortly after achieving Demigodhood; he wanted to claim a Ring and make a new Library to someday rival the Crystal Library in scope. After he discovered this drawback, he spent the 10x QP to pull back what he'd put into it to make it his Divine Realm, and thus pull [I]out[/I] of the Ring; this freed him to roam the cosmos (and later, other cosmoi) again. [B][SIZE=3]The Path of the Ultimate Gate[/SIZE][/B] This place, located in a small demiplane deep in a remote location within the Astral Plane- so remote, mind you, that even deities would take centuries to travel there without teleportation or opening a direct [I]Gate[/I]- is a lonely, rocky outcropping set into a barren desert without even a few stunted trees to break the lifeless feel. The air feels warm, but somehow stale and dead, and the impression of incredible [I]age[/I] is impossible to escape there. The outcropping has a single cave, a mere 10 feet wide and high, which leads into the rock and somehow manages to extend longer on the inside than the available space on the outside allows- eventually opening out into a chamber carved into the rock. In that chamber, crumbling and weathered by countless eons of time, there is a sort of impression of a carving on one wall- barely visible even when one is specifically looking for it- of a tall arch, and a hand on top of that arch which appears to be reaching for something above it and just out of its grasp. This place has one purpose, and that is to facilitate transitions to the Far Realm. In that chamber, by using the proper rituals in conjunction with the spell, one can cast a perfectly ordinary [I]Gate[/I] to any desired layer of the Far Realm- provided of course that one can specify the desired layer exactly enough (malicious interpretation of wording should be the norm here). One can also [I]Plane Shift[/I] to the Far Realm, even without having an appropriate material component to shift with. Finally, and this is how the place saw use in my game, one can perform a similar ritual with the Silver Key to "translate" oneself into the Far Realm- but more on that in the next post (which will actually discuss that artifact). I will mention here, though, what should be obvious to anybody who has read the stories from which I took inspiration for the Silver Key: the cavern described above is a match for the one in those stories. [B][SIZE=3]The Shrine of the Ninefold Path[/SIZE][/B] This last planar edifice never saw on-screen use in my game, though the PCs knew about it and had vague plans of going there for a long time. As a result, I never actually gave it a full description; I just stated that somewhere in a demiplane in a remote corner of the Astral Plane (not, perhaps, [I]quite[/I] as remote as the Path of the Ultimate Gate, but still remote) is a temple dedicated to no known god or pantheon. Within that temple, carvings and symbols exist that have never been translated into any known language. The place is divided into nine wings, and the name of this edifice was suggested by the discoverers based on that number and the impression they got (from looking at the carvings, though they didn't truly understand them) that they were intended as some sort of instructions or map. And based on hints I've dropped elsewhere, the purpose of this place is probably obvious to most readers. The "Ninefold Path" of the title is, of course, the nine methods of Sidereal Ascension, and the Shrine is nothing less than an instruction book left behind by Something Greater to show deities (and others) how to evolve to the next level of existence. The carvings are enigmatic in the extreme, and even viewing the original Shrine, one would need to make Knowledge checks (likely Religion, or Arcana) to discern their precise meaning. DCs for these checks should be set in the high hundreds, certainly no less than 400 for even basic information, if one is using my table for deity advancement. Of course, more than merely nine methods exist for Sidereal Ascension, and [B]all[/B] methods are in fact recorded in the Shrine regardless of number, but the nine [I]main[/I] methods are the focus of the nine wings of the edifice. It is possible, though since I never detailed this place I never decided on this, that one can perform special rituals at the Shrine to facilitate attempts at Sidereal Ascension somehow. This could make the "paths" easier to follow, or perhaps just help them along (for example, perhaps it is possible there to cast an Epic spell which can cause all mortals on a particular Material Plane to worship a single deity- which would facilitate the [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/eternity-publishing-hosted-forum/267554-sidereal-ascension-methods.html#post4987058]Worship Method[/URL]). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Archive Forums
Hosted Forums
Personal & Hosted Forums
Hosted Publisher Forums
Eternity Publishing Hosted Forum
paradox42's crazy cosmology
Top